McALLEN, Texas (AP) - On his own visit to the Mexican border Monday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush denounced Donald Trump's immigration plan as unrealistic and expensive.
Trump has proposed building a massive border fence and kicking out the estimated 11 million people who are in the U.S. illegally before allowing the "good ones" and "talented" ones back in.
That plan is "not based in reality," Bush said, arguing it will require a "much better strategy than building a fence" to deal with the complexity of America's broken immigration system.
Trump took his 2016 Republican campaign to the Mexican border in July to highlight what he considers a broken border-security system. Appearing on "Fox & Friends" earlier Monday, he said of Bush, "I think it's great that he's going to the border because I think he'll now find out that it is not an act of love."
That was a jab at Bush's comment before he joined the race that people come to the U.S. out of love for their families and the wish to give them a better life.
Bush said Trump's immigration plan would cost billions of dollars, violate civil liberties and "create friction" with Mexico, America's third-largest trading partner.
Reporters peppered Bush with questions about his use of the term "anchor babies" to describe children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally. Some find the term offensive.
Bush said he was referring to alleged fraud by families seeking to have their children born in the U.S. to guarantee citizenship. He said stricter enforcement of immigration laws would help resolve the problem and repeated his opposition to any move to deny U.S. citizenship to those born in America.
He said it was "ludicrous" to think he was being derogatory toward immigrants given his own family's Hispanic heritage.
"I'm proud to be married to a Mexican-American woman and I have children who are Hispanic," he said in Spanish as the restaurant crowd applauded.